All posts for the month June, 2015

All throughout the mainstream media last week we heard the same myopic litany — ‘a massive wildfire outbreak ongoing in Alaska is not abnormal.’ Well, today, all pretense that there was anything normal about the 314 wildfires still raging throughout the state has gone up in a cloud of boreal forest, tundra, and thawed permafrost emitted smoke.

(Alaska Interagency Center map of currently active wildfires now burning in Alaska.)

With 42 hours left in June and with more than 300 fires still active, it’s pretty clear that the current fire season is a historic, unprecedented, record-shattering event. One that will almost certainly break the 2 million acre mark and may show double the over-all previous record burning during June of 2004. An excessive new record that is occurring in the ominous context of the hottest year in the global climate record and a vastly irresponsible dumping of 50 billion tons of heat-trapping, CO2 equivalent (of which 32 billion tons is CO2) gasses into the atmosphere through fossil fuel burning and related industry each and every year.

As Alaska burned through half a million acres of forest in just one day, a massive heatwave was also setting off extreme wildfires throughout northwest Canada. It was the same heatwave that broke new temperature records all across Washington, and the mountain west. Temperatures in places like Walla, Walla Washington hit 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius) on Sunday — breaking the previous all time June temperature record for the day by 4 degrees (2.2 C). A pulse of heat rising off the back of a strengthening El Nino in the Pacific, running all the way up the Western Seaboard and Mountains of the US and driving deep into northwestern Canada.

(Massive plumes of smoke emitting from wildfires burning near Great Slave Lake in Northwest Territory, Canada on Sunday. For reference, bottom edge of frame is 350 miles. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)

The added heat riled wildfires burning throughout much of the permafrost zone in Canada, pushing blazes to explosive size and dumping massive plumes of smoke into an atmosphere already heavily laden with Alaska’s brown carbon pulse. In the above LANCE-MODIS image we can see about 30 of these fires burning away near Great Slave Lake. Note that some of the fire fronts in the above image are more than 15 miles long.

Given the satellite assessment from yesterday, it appears that the same excessive heat, dryness and permafrost thaw that has set off record fires for Alaska during June is now also in play for Canada. Initial reports from Canada’ Interagency Fire Center confirm this assessment with 138 new fires erupting in just the past 24 hours alone and more than 2,250,000 acres burned for the country since the start of 2015. As a result of the excessive Arctic heat (associated with both El Nino and overall human warming) and extreme rate of new fire starts, we are at risk of seeing unpecedented wildfire conditions continuing to spread throughout this warming, vulnerable Arctic region.

UPDATE: Preliminary numbers for acres burned in Alaska, according to Interagency Center reports have been downgraded somewhat to greater than 1.6 million total acres burned. These totals are still in record range with between 200,000 to 300,000 acres burned each day. It seems, given the unprecedented number and intensity of fires now burning (currently 300) in AK that there’s some difficulty getting an accurate assessment of conditions on the ground. The downgrade is somewhat good news in light of an overall difficult and record fire season for Alaska. Will keep updating as new information becomes available.

(Please help support public, government-funded climate change resiliency efforts like those aided by various interagency fire centers within the US and Canada in addition to the critically valuable satellite tracking provided by the amazing scientific and research teams at NASA.)

In Sao Paulo today, a Latin American megalopolis that is now home to 20 million people, public water supplies are cut off for as long as three days at a time. But despite this draconian rationing, the Cantareira Reservoir sits at 9 percent below dead pool. A level so low that utility managers had to install new pipes into the reservoir bottom to tap water supply dregs. A controversial policy due to the fact that drawing water from so low in the pool both results in fish kills and in much more polluted water going into rivers (like the foaming Tiete) and the drinking and bathing supply.

(The Cantareira Reservoir has been bone dry for more than a year and a half now. Severe water rationing has managed to keep levels about steady for the time being. Image source: UOL.)

Much attention has been paid to the Sao Paulo drought. This is likely due to the very dire water situation immediately threatening 20 million people with severe water rationing, increased risk of waterborne illness (see Dengue Fever strikes Sao Paulo), and spurring migration to less water stressed regions. But the quiet truth, less widely reported, is that a massive swath of Latin America is also suffering major drought.

The drought centers over the tree-depleted and human settlement invaded Amazon Rainforest. There half year moisture deficits are in the range of 400 millimeters or greater (16+ inches). A level of extraordinary drought in a region that supplies critical moisture to the surrounding states and nations. Years of clear cutting, slash and burn agriculture, and ramping temperatures due to human-caused climate change have taken a terrible toll on the Amazon. Now its resiliency is compromised with drought a common-place occurrence even as hundreds of wildfires burn away at the forest understory every year.

The warming climate (greenhouse emissions based), the water cycle disrupting clear cutting, and the fires all take their toll, resulting in a declining rainforest health and related moisture levels. The worst years of all are El Nino years — when warming Equatorial Pacific waters enhance drought potentials all throughout the Amazon of Northern Brazil. And the 2015 El Nino is no exception, with worsening drought conditions building at center mass over the Amazon River Basin and its related rainforests.

Prevailing and intensifying drought in the Amazon has far-flung impacts. The region acts as a kind of atmospheric moisture reservoir — sending out streams of flying rivers toward the North, South and East. In this way a healthy Amazon rainforest pumps up the clouds over vast regions, enabling rainfall from Colombia to the Caribbean and throughout Brazil. But an ailing, warming, drought-sweltered and clear-cut rainforest loses its ability to send out flying rivers. Instead, it dries out at its heart.

(Often visible from the air, the trees of the Amazon release vast clouds of water vapor into the air. These ‘flying rivers’ are now drying up as the Amazon is warmed by human climate change, burned by understory fires, and clear cut by human development. Image source: Climate News Network.)

For some places in Colombia, this has meant residents suffering through drought for more than three years. In La Guajira, some residents are suffering loss of life due to lack of water and related food stores. The situation is complicated due to the fact that most of the water from depleted aquifer supplies for the region now goes to industrial uses like irrigation-fed international farms or the largest open pit coal mine in the world. This leaves very little water left for residents and what supplies remain are often brackish and polluted.

In the Caribbean, more than 1.5 million people are now affected by drought with many also facing severe water rationing. Water shortages, withering crops, dead cattle, and disruption to tourism has impacted far-flung island nations from Puerto Rico to St Lucia to Cuba to the Dominican Republic. In the Dominican Republic, the situation is rapidly worsening with civil engineers stating that many of the island nation’s towns have less than thirty days of water left. Reports from other regions like Haiti are more spotty but indications are that these are also heavily impacted (Haiti is terribly deforested and, as a result, has very little resiliency to any form of extreme weather).

With El Nino still ramping up and with global temperatures likely to continue to hit new record highs (due to the heating effect of excessive fossil fuel emissions and CO2 levels hitting above 400 parts per million [above 480 CO2e] for the first time in at least 3 million years) throughout 2015, drought conditions for the Amazon, for Brazil, for Colombia and for the Caribbean will likely continue to worsen for at least the next six months. And to this point it is worth re-stating that crushing drought conditions are not confined to Sao Paulo but instead range from Uruguay through Brazil, Venezuala, Colombia and on into much of the Caribbean Island Chain.

A combination of record hot temperatures and unprecedented thunderstorm activity over the Arctic state has provided numerous dry fuels and lightning-based ignition sources over recent weeks. During the past few days, conditions rapidly worsened as an extreme fire outbreak absorbed all of the firefighting resources of Alaska and tapped a substantial portion of other states’ resources as well.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the NASA/MODIS satellite shot of Alaska (below) showed much of the massive state shrouded under vast clouds of steely gray smoke billowing up from the scores of wildfires blazing beneath. A cloud so large it is now becoming entrained in the Jet Stream and will likely blanket a large section of the Northern Hemisphere in a brown-carbon haze.

(The origin of a 3,000+ mile long cloud of smoke swirls over scores of wildfires now burning throughout Alaska and Canada. Over the past five days, the number of Alaskan wildfires alone has doubled — an upshot of record Arctic heat in a record hot world. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)

According to Alaska Dispatch News, conditions on the ground were rapidly worsening as 40 new fires erupted on Wednesday. The swiftly expanding Tozitna fire forced Tanana community residents to evacuate. Another town — Nulato — was encircled by a 1,200-acre blaze Wednesday forcing its airstrip to shut down. The Nulato fire is now being battled by 100 firefighters working feverishly to save community structures. Meanwhile, Kenai Peninsula residents breathed a tentative sigh of relief as the Card Street fire and Willow’s Sockeye fire were checked by active firefighting efforts.

Joining what is now a massive, state-wide effort are firefighters sent from Missouri today. The Missourians are added to a now national effort to contain and control the raging Alaska blazes that, so far, have consumed over 400,000 acres. Firefighters may get a little help — with the weather predicted to back off record temperatures as storms ride in from the Gulf of Alaska.

Global Warming Intensifying Alaskan Wildfires

But conditions on the ground are making some firefighting efforts extremely difficult. For not only do fire crews have to combat blazes igniting in tradition fuels like boreal forests and tundra scrub, they also must deal with fuels added by an ongoing permafrost thaw. This thaw, set off by human-forced warming of the climate, unlocks organic materials long frozen within the soil itself. These organic materials form a carbon-rich peat-like layer beneath the top soil. And like peat, the stuff is flammable when dried through the increasingly warm Arctic Spring, Summer, and Fall. Once thawed and dried, it creates an understory fuel that can keep blazes burning for weeks, months, and sometimes years.

Throughout the Arctic, there are hundreds of billions of tons of permafrost. And much of it is now thawing at the southern edge and along the warming coastlines of the Arctic Ocean. Of this permafrost, Alaska has more than its fair share — with most of state soils covering a carbon-fueled permafrost under-layer.

It’s this combination of human-caused warming and the related unlocking of permafrost fuels that has likely contributed to a substantial increase in the number fires and area burned in Alaska over the last 60 years. For a report published Wednesday by Climate Central has now found that as temperatures warmed by 3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.7 Celsius) in Alaska over the past six decades (twice as fast as the rest of the US) both the number of large wildfires and the area consumed by fires within the state is dramatically increasing.

(Climate Central’s June 24 report shows that the number of large Alaskan wildfires has nearly doubled in recent decades when compared with large wildfire frequency during the 1950s through the 1980s. Image source: Climate Central.)

The area burned in large wildfires each year is increasing. In just two years, 2004 and 2005, wildfires burned a larger area than in the 15 years from 1950-1964 combined. In particular, there has been a dramatic increase in wildfires larger than 10,000 acres but smaller than 50,000 acres.

Though a 3 F (1.7 C) warming of Alaska over the past 60 years has already provided significant additional heat and fuels, additional warming through 2050 globally is predicted to be between 2 and 4 F (1.1 to 2.2 C) under moderate to severe additional fossil fuel emissions (RCP 4.5, RCP 6 and RCP 8.5). Due to polar amplification, warming in Alaska is likely to be roughly twice the global average. And as a result, fires throughout the state are only likely to grow more extreme.

UPDATE: According to the most recent Alaska Interagency Center Situation Report, fire totals jumped by an additional 26 active fires over the last 24 hours. Now 317 wildfires are actively burning in the region. Acres burned for 2015 have also jumped by more than 250,000 to a total of 919,000. If sustained, this pace of burning will be enough to challenge all time records for June set in 2004 at more than 1.6 million acres burned.

Some news reports have made the misleading claim that the current fire season is normal for Alaska. This is clearly not the case. Number of active fires and daily acres burned are now in exceptional to unprecedented ranges. Daily acres burned hitting totals greater than 200,000 are significant events that should not be treated so lightly.

Last week, a set of climate models predicted the emergence of a large and moderately strong westerly wind burst running against the trades associated with an eastward propagating cloudy and rainy phase of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO). And, over the past few days a moderate strength, but very wide-ranging, westerly wind pattern appeared.

(A strengthening westerly wind burst over the Western Equatorial Pacific could produce a third warm Kelvin Wave and further heighten an El Nino that already has a potential to be very intense come Fall. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

Today, 20 to 35 mile per hour westerly winds are prevalent along a 2,500 mile stretch of ocean running from just east of the Philippines, across an equatorial zone just north of New Guinea, and on eastward for hundreds more miles in the direction of the Date Line. The winds are associated with numerous low pressure systems developing both north and south of the Equator — their cyclonic wind patterns joining in a daisy chain like feature to drive a large synoptic westerly wind back-burst (WWB).

Over the next few days, winds within the zone are predicted to strengthen to near gale force intensity. But it’s the size of the zone that may have the greatest impact.

Strong, long-fetch westerlies in this region of the world have a tendency to push warm surface waters, now topping off at 31 degrees Celsius (and 1-2 C above the already hotter than normal 1979 to 2000 average), downward and eastward. This heat pump action generates what, in meteorological parlance, are known as warm Kelvin Waves. And warm Kelvin Waves are high energy fuel for strengthening El Ninos.

(Warm water propagation through the upper 300 meters of the central and eastern Equatorial Pacific serves as oceanic fuel for El Nino events. In the above graph by NOAA, not one but two warm Kelvin Waves are indicated — one peaking during April and May, and a second ongoing now. Will a significant westerly wind burst, now lighting off in the Western Pacific, generate a third warm Kelvin Wave by August? Image source: NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.)

Adding a third significant Westerly Wind Burst on top of an already warming Equatorial Pacific throws yet one more variable into the dynamic El Nino forecast. A variable that could heighten the already strong potential for a major El Nino event late this Summer through to Fall. And one that could further heighten extreme global record hot temperatures during 2015. For the late June WWB is likely to produce an extraordinary third Warm Kelvin Wave, giving the currently strengthening El Nino yet one more shove toward increasingly extreme conditions.

1075 feet. That’s the water level Lake Mead must stay above before mandatory multi-state water rationing goes into effect. A level just 25 feet above the highest intake pipe used to supply cities across the Desert Southwest. Last night water levels at the key national water storage facility fell below that hard line to 1074.99 feet — a record low never before seen in all of its history.

If water levels remain below the 1075 foot mark through January of 2016, then a multi-state rationing will go into effect (with most acute impacts for Arizona and Nevada). A rationing that will have serious consequences for desert cities across the Southwest, cities like Las Vegas which rely on Lake Mead for so much of their water.

Despite Lake Mead hitting the 1075 hard line, it appears that rationing may be forestalled through 2016. It’s a silver lining of all the severe summer storms that have rolled through the Colorado River Basin this spring and summer — pumping up water flows to Lake Mead and Lake Powell. A flush of much needed moisture that will, hopefully, prevent water rationing from going into effect during 2016. But prospects for the future, despite this temporary respite, are starting to look a bit grim.

Risk of Future Megadrought

The trend set in place by a human-forced warming of the Desert Southwest has resulted in an increasing number of dry years. The added heat forces water to evaporate more rapidly. So even when it does rain an average amount, moisture levels still fall. The result is not only an increase in single year droughts, but an increased risk of decadal droughts (called megadroughts).

As the years progress and more of the impacts of human-forced global warming become apparent, the drought impacts and severe drought risks are only expected to rise. For according to a recent Cornell University report (2014) the chance of a 10 year drought for the US Southwest under a moderate warming scenario (RCP 4.5) is 50% this century (greater for states like Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada — see graphic below). The chances of a 30 year drought range from 20-50 percent depending on the severity of the human greenhouse gas emission.

(Risk of an individual State experiencing a 10 year or longer drought as a result of global warming due to human fossil fuel emissions over the course of the next century. Note that Lake Meade watershed states show the highest risk for periods of terrible drying. Image source: Southwest May Face Megadrought this Century.)

“For the southwestern U.S., I’m not optimistic about avoiding real megadroughts. As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this – we are weighting the dice for megadrought conditions.”

For reference, the current historic California drought is, so far, a four-year affair. So, as difficult and damaging as that drought has been, a 10 year or a thirty year drought may be seem comparatively unimaginable by today’s standards. In other words, though it’s been rather dry for the U.S. West over the past 15 years, an impact likely already worsened by human-caused climate change, we haven’t seen anything yet.

Early Warning and A Call For Necessary Action

In addition to increasing drying and severe drought risks, growing cities throughout the U.S. West have put greater and greater strains on water stores like Lake Mead. As a result of the combined human-forced drought and increased water consumption, levels at Lake Mead have been dropping since 1999. Back then, water levels averaged around 1200 feet. And since that time we’ve seen an average 8 foot drop each year.

It’s a trend that, unless it changes, will almost certainly mean water rationing in 2017, 2018 or 2019, if not 2016. Water resource officials are notably concerned. Water-policy manager Drew Beckwith of Western Resource Advocates noted in USA TODAY:

“This is the check-engine light. It really does (make critical) the fact that we have to start changing.”

And that’s absolutely true. We need to change how we manage and use water in the US Southwest and we need to do absolutely everything we can to prevent as much future warming as possible to reduce the risk and intensity of the future megadroughts that are a likely upshot of human-forced warming. The crossing of the 1075 line for Lake Mead yesterday should thus be viewed as a climate change shot across the bow. If we want to husband our resources wisely, we need to look both toward conservation and toward making certain conditions do not spiral beyond even the ability of responsible resource management to make a difference. That’s the basic lesson of climate change — there are simply some conditions that are impossible to adapt to. And the goal of every rational person should be to do everything possible to prevent and reduce the intensity of those conditions. The water security of the U.S. Southwest depends on it.

Human-forced warming of the global climate system is pushing sea surface temperatures in some areas to a maximum of 33 C. Extreme ocean warming that is increasing the amount of latent heat the atmosphere can deliver to human bodies during heatwaves. And near a 33 C sea surface hot zone, the past few days have witnessed extreme heat and related tragic mass casualties in Sindh, Pakistan.

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For Pakistan, the heat and humidity has been deadly. Temperatures over Southeastern Pakistan hit 100 to 113 Fahrenheit (40 to 45 degrees Celsius) during recent days. Night time lows dipped only into the 80s and 90s (30s Celsius). Relative humidity throughout this period has remained above a brutal 50% even during the hottest hours of the day.

Wet bulb temperatures (the wet-bulb temperature is the temperature air has if it is cooled to saturation — 100% relative humidity — by evaporation) climbed into a dangerous range of 30 to 33 degrees Celsius. This greatly reduced the ability of evaporation at skin level to cool the bodies of human beings exposed to such oppressive temperatures. As a result, people working outdoors, the elderly, or those without access to climate-controlled environments fell under severe risk of heat related injuries.

The Hospital Morgue is Overflowing

According to reports from Al Jazzera, thousands of heat injuries and hundreds of deaths have occurred across the region since Saturday. Karachi’s largest hospital — Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) — has been flooded with over 5,000 patients suffering from heat injuries since the weekend. At some points, the hospital was receiving one heat injury patient per minute — a pace that nearly overwhelmed the facility. By earlier today, more than 380 of those patients had died.

Dr Seemin Jamali, a senior official at JPMC noted to Al Jazeera:

“The mortuary is overflowing, they are piling bodies one on top of the other. We are doing everything that is humanly possible here. Until [Tuesday] night, it was unbelievable. We were getting patients coming into the emergency ward every minute.”

Across Sindh, Pakistan the story was much the same with the total official heat death toll now standing at 775 and climbing as calls were raised for more government support for people impacted by the worst heat wave to hit Pakistan in at least 15 years.

Killing Heat and Unprecedented Rains

This extreme and deadly heat is a feature of a boundary zone between a hot, high-pressure air mass over the Persian Gulf region abutting against a very moist and El Nino-intensified monsoonal system over India. The result is a combination of high heat and high humidity — factors that, together, are very hard on the human body (wet bulb temperatures above 30 C are considered dangerous, while a blanket measure of 35 C [never reached yet on Earth] is considered rapidly deadly even in the shade).

During late May and early June, similar conditions resulted in hundreds of heat related deaths in India. When the heat finally abated, the subsequent influx of monsoonal moisture set off torrential downpours. In some places, rates of rainfall exceeded typical June monsoonal accumulations by nearly 50 percent with Mumbai already having received 32 inches of rainfall (normal June rainfall is 23 inches). With Mumbai showing daily rainfall accumulations of 1-3 inches, it is possible that June totals could be double that of a typical year.

A Ramping Oceanic Heat/Moisture Pump — Feature of a Record Warm World

The high heat, high humidity and related extreme rainfall events are all features of a warming world. At issue, primarily, is the impact of human forced global warming on the ocean system and how this heating then impacts the atmosphere — making it harder for humans to remain alive outdoors during the most extreme heating events even as it pushes a tendency for more and more extreme droughts and deluges.

This warming related heat and moisture flux is most visible out in the Pacific, where record global atmospheric and ocean heat is pushing maximum sea surface temperatures into the lower 30s (typically between 30 and 31 degrees Celsius). These high sea surface temperatures in a record warm world are now dumping an extreme amount of moisture into the atmosphere through an El Nino amplified evaporation rate. A subsequent amplification of the equatorial storm track due to extreme moisture loading has already seen extraordinary record rainfall events in places as widespread as India, China and the Central U.S.

Maximum global sea surface temperature is a good proxy measure for how much moisture the atmosphere can hold, a measure that also likely determines the maximum wet bulb temperature (implied latent heat) at any given point on the globe. And particularly, near Pakistan, we find ocean surface temperature readings in the range of 30 to 33 C running through the coastal zone of the Indian Ocean and on into the Persian Gulf. Readings that increased the amount of moisture the atmosphere could hold at high temperature, increased relative humidity readings as temperatures entered the 100s Fahrenheit (40s C), and forced wet bulb temperatures into deadly ranges which in turn reduced the ability of the human body to cool by evaporation at skin level.

This is how human-forced global warming kills with direct heat — by basically increasing latent heat to the point that evaporation can no longer cool the human body to a natural maintenance temperature of 98.6 (F) or 37 (C). And once wet bulb temperatures start hitting 35 C, then the heat casualty potential really starts to get bad — essentially rendering heat wave regions temporarily uninhabitable for human life outdoors. With maximum sea surface temperatures now running near 33 C, we’re probably just within about 2 C of hitting that deadly boundary.

The Pakistan and Indian heat deaths this year, though extraordinarily tragic and probably preventable without current level of human forced warming of the atmosphere, serve as a warning. Keep warming the globe through fossil fuel emissions and there are many far, far worse heatwaves to come.

Hot Blob #2 is a vast stretch of warm water covering the Bering and Chukchi seas between Alaska and Kamchatka (Neven, in his most recent sea ice summary, touched on this building warm water zone here). It encompasses surface waters in an usually frigid region that now feature temperatures ranging from 3 to 5.5 degrees Celsius above normal. Covering an area roughly 800 miles in diameter, this pool of outlandishly warm ocean waters is being fed by currents running up from the south and by heat bleeding off Alaskan and Siberian land masses. In this case, land masses that are also experiencing record heat.

Though the abnormal warmth is also likely fed by a powerful albedo switch from white, reflective sea ice, to dark, sunlight absorbing ocean, other factors associated with El Nino and related to the hot blob off the North American West Coast are also likely in play. And of particular interest in this present extreme hot water situation are currents flowing northward out of these warm pools and directly into the Arctic. Currents that have been eating away at the ice since winter.

One warm water bearing current — the Alaskan Coastal Current — runs directly out of the abnormally hot surface zone in the Northeastern Pacific (Blob #1). This current flows along the North American Continental Shelf, out past the Aleutian Island Chain and finally up into the Bering Sea. A second current — the Siberian Coastal Current — feeds into the Bering from the Asian Continental Shelf. These currents then combine and push Bering Sea waters on through the Bering Strait and up into the Chukchi Sea.

(Algae blooms, like this one in the Chukchi Sea just south of the ice pack, have been a common feature of the Pacific Ocean hot pools. The warmer waters are a preferred environment for microbes which can see some amazingly rapid population explosions. If the blooms become too numerous they can rob the ocean surface waters of nutrients and die off en masse. The decay of dead masses of algae can then leech away the oceans’ life-giving oxygen, setting off and contributing to a chain of harmful ocean anoxia. In a warming world, this process, combined with disruption of ocean currents and the basic fact that warmer waters bear less oxygen in solution, is a major contributor to mass extinction events. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)

Northward propagation of these currents during spring and summer plays a critical role in the rate of sea ice recession in the Bering, Chukchi, Beaufort and East Siberian Seas. Waters warmed by the summer sun and by the more rapidly heating continents amplify in the Bering Strait before making contact with the sea ice and pushing it to melt and recede.

Impacts Already Visible Up the Coast

This year, waters in the Strait are extraordinarily warm — measuring 5.4 degrees above normal surface water temperatures. A plug of 5 C + above average water entering the Chukchi, Bering, Beaufort and East Siberian seas at a time when solar insolation is hitting peak intensity and during a period when nearby Arctic regions like Alaska are experiencing some of their hottest temperatures ever recorded. These waters, at temperatures in the range of 7-8 degrees Celsius, are warm enough to rapidly melt any ice they contact. And they’re flooding directly toward the ice pack.

(Ice rapidly melting off of Barrow, Alaska on June 23, 2015. Ice is seen receding from the near shore zone even as the ice pack further out breaks into dark blue patches of open ocean. Image source: Barrow Ice Cam.)

Unusually warm surface water and air temperature impacts can already be seen further down the coast in places like Barrow, Alaska. Today, near shore sea ice dramatically melted and off-shore sea ice has retreated poleward — revealing the tell-tale blue of open ocean in the distance. An extreme one day change for Barrow sea ice, which only featured melt ponds and some near-shore melt 24 hours before.

Conditions, Model Runs Point Toward Substantial Thinning

Looking northward, we find ice pack conditions showing substantial thinning, significant melt pond formation over the surface ice and increasingly disassociated ice flows in the Beaufort, Chukchi, and East Siberian Seas. Near shore ice in the East Siberian Sea (ESS) has taken on a vivid blue or glassy appearance indicative of melt pond formation. Melt and compaction wedges have formed in the ESS along an axis pointing toward the pole. In the Chukchi, sea ice recession and thinning appear to be proceeding quite rapidly, while dispersing ice in the Beaufort is hitting warmer surface waters, fed by Mackenzie River outflow, and melting.

(The ARCc model run shows rapid thinning in the Beaufort, Chukchi and ESS through June 30. Image source: US Navy.)

The Navy’s ARCc historic and forecast model run for May 30 through June 30 shows rapid thinning of sea ice in the affected regions. The forecast run for the next seven days shows extreme thinning continuing through the ESS and Chukchi, with thicker ice in the Beaufort also experiencing substantial reductions (Note that the Navy’s GLBb model runs look even worse).

Overall, given the fact that storms are now ranging through substantial sections of the Arctic, pushing for more sea ice dispersal, losses will tend to show up more in the sea ice area and volume measures first. Dispersal will also tend to mute extent losses for a time. Given the delay in area and volume tracking, it’s likely that overall impacts to sea ice will tend to be muted in the measures over coming days with a clearer signal showing up by late June and early July. But despite these underlying and complicating weather conditions, the fact remains that a lot of unusually warm water is heading northward toward the ice, with likely greater impacts to follow.

(MODIS satellite shot of wildfires erupting over a sweltering Southwestern Alaska on Sunday, June 21. Wildfires in permafrost regions of the Arctic like Alaska are particularly concerning as they are one mechanism that returns ancient sequestered carbon to the Earth atmosphere. A sign of a feedback set off by human warming that will worsen with continued fossil fuel emissions. Image source: LANCE-MODIS.)

Deadhorse, at the center of North Slope oil fields above the Arctic Circle set an all time record high of 82 degrees Fahrenheit (28 Celsius) on Sunday. That’s 3 degrees hotter than the previous all time record high of 79 degrees (26 C) set on August 16, 2004. The hottest reading for June at that location was a 68 degree (20 C) measure set in 2007. So, basically, Deadhorse just shattered the all-time record for June by 14 degrees (F) and the globally record hot summer of 2015 has only now gotten started.

Other locations experiencing new records for just Sunday included Kotzebue, which set a new all time record highest low temperature of 62 degrees (17 C). This reading broke the previous all time high minimum mark of 56 degrees (14 C), set in 1987. Bethel and Yakutat both tied their daily high minimum temperature records at 54 and 52 degrees (12 and 11 C), respectively.

And yesterday was just one day in long period of record heat for the State. Last month’s NOAA analysis showed temperatures fully 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 C) above average. It’s a record heating that is now setting off severe wildfires all over Alaska. According to the state’s Wildland Fire Information Center, the relentless heat and dryness has turned spruce, hardwoods, brush, and tundra into dry fuels vulnerable to any ignition source. Over the past week, ignition has come in the form of lightning — with most of Alaska’s 2015 wildfires set off by nature’s spark.

As a result we are seeing nearly double the number of fires during June compared to a typical year. Fires that have already destroyed 30 structures, forced evacuations, and tapped Alaska’s firefighting resources to its limits.

Wildfires Burning in the Rainforests of Washington as Major Heatwave Approaches

Record hot temperatures and wildfires, unfortunately, are not just an issue for Alaska. They’re a prevalent concern all up and down Western North America. A zone that has seen several years of record hot temperatures and dryness. Extreme weather events fueled by such global warming-linked phenomena as a Ridiculously Resilient high pressure Ridge over the Northeast Pacific that has kept heatwave and drought conditions firmly entrenched throughout much of the region for months and years. An atmospheric condition that is also linked to a hot ocean surface water ‘Blob’ in the Northeast Pacific (which is itself implicated in a growing number of marine species deaths).

(Paradise Fire burning near a drought-shrunken creek in the rainforests of Olympia National Park, Washington. Image source: NPS and Wildfire Today.)

Firefighters are doing their best to contain the blaze. But the record heat and dryness are multiplying fuel sources. Fires are enabled by dried lichens growing high up in the trees. When flames touch the lichens they rapidly ignite sending sparks to other lichen-covered tree tops. In this way, flames can leap rapidly from tree to tree under current conditions.

It’s very unusual to see fires in this rainforest zone. And when ignitions have occurred in those very rare cases, they have typically flared during late Summer and early Fall. So this June burning has fire officials very concerned — especially given the nearly unprecedented fire hazard conditions throughout the State. Conditions that are predicted to rapidly worsen as an extreme heatwave is expected to build through the coming weekend.

(A major heatwave is predicted to invade the US West and Northwest States this weekend. Washington and Oregon are predicted to experience temperatures more typical of desert sections of California and Arizona. Image source: Climate Reanalyzer.)

Temperatures over large stretches of Washington and Oregon are expected to climb into the 90s and 100s, possibly reaching the 110s (Fahrenheit — Celsius range from 33 to 45) by Sunday. For these typically cool, wet States, this brutal heat blow, should it emerge as predicted, will set off a spate of all time record high temperature readings, deepen drought conditions extending northward from California, and heighten fire conditions that are already in the range of worst ever experienced for sections of these States.

California Experiencing “Worst Fire Conditions On Record”

Moving further south along the U.S. West Coast we come at last to the drought hot zone that is California. A State that is now enduring its fourth year of drought. A drought that tree ring studies show is likely the worst such event in 1,000 years.

We measure the fuel moisture content of all of the vegetation -the brush and the trees and we track that over the course of time and compare it month to month each year. And we put it through formulas and determine how much energy and how much heat it will put out when it’s burning. And we have seen -we saw it last year and we will see it again this year- we’ll be reaching records for potential heat output for times of the year that would normally not be burning in those conditions.

(Large wildfire burns in forests along the slopes of Sierra Nevada Mountains whose peaks are now entirely devoid of snow cover. Note that remaining glaciers are shown turning a dull brown in the June 21 MODIS satellite shot.)

So far this year over 1,100 wildfires have already ignited throughout the State. That’s nearly twice the typical number of 650 blazes popping up by this time of year. Exacerbating this stark context is a state water resource crisis compounded by non-existent Sierra Nevada snowpacks and dead trees that now number in the millions.

This is not Normal, Nor Should We View Widespread, Related Events in Isolation

Record and unusual Alaska, Washington, and California wildfires this season are, thus, not occurring in isolation, but as an inseparable feature of ongoing climate trends related to human-caused global warming. In this case, heatwaves are related to visible and extreme record ocean and atmospheric temperatures that have been ramping both globally and in the regions affected over past years and decades. And the fact that 2015 is continuing as the hottest year on record globally should also not be viewed as separate from the events witnessed all up and down the North American West Coast. Events that were largely predicted in many global climate models assessing the impacts of human based greenhouse gas warming on this vital national and global region.

We’ll end here by considering this thought — it’s only June, yet up and down the North American West Coast we are experiencing some of the worst heat, drought, and fire conditions ever recorded. It’s only June…

* * * *

UPDATE NOON EST, JUNE 23, 2015: Satellite Imagery confirms that, over the past 24-48 hours, the wildfire situation in Alaska has continued to worsen. Widespread and large fires running throughout southwestern, central, northeastern and eastern Alaska today expanded and multiplied:

(Fires flared to dangerous size across Alaska on June 22nd and 23nd. Image source: LANCE-MODIS)

These rapidly proliferating fires cover a diagonal swath stretching about 800 miles from southwest to northeast across the state. The fires are burning through Alaska’s permafrost zone and current intensity in the satellite image is similar to some of the worst Arctic fires we’ve seen during recent years. A substantial number of these fires feature smoke footprints indicating 5-10 mile active burn fronts. Smoke plume size is now large enough to become caught up in the Jet Stream and impact visual features of skies across the Northern Hemisphere.

Based on these satellite shots, it appears that Alaska is experiencing a heightening and very severe fire emergency — one that shows little sign of abatement over the next few days.

2014 was the hottest year in the global climate record. It was a year when El Nino failed to get off the ground. And it was a year when CO2 levels were at or near 400 parts per million for most of the period.

Each of these points should be a matter of concern, especially as we confront a yet hotter year during 2015 in the face of a ramping El Nino and continually rising greenhouse gas concentrations from fossil fuel burning. Conditions that will likely continue to push record global heat toward ever more disturbing thresholds.

First Five Months of 2015 Hottest on Record; El Nino is Still Ramping Up

The most recent NOAA global analysis report and related updates highlight this potential and growing risk. First, NOAA data shows that the initial five months of 2015 were the hottest on record by a substantial margin. Hitting 0.85 C above the 20th Century average, this global heatwave beat out the previous hottest such period during 2010 by a substantial +0.09 C margin.

(NOAA shows extreme high temperature departures for the first five months of 2015. Image source: NOAA’s Global Analysis.)

These temperatures, basically 1.05 degrees Celsius above 1880s values in the NOAA measure, represent an extreme departure beyond norms over the past few thousands years and almost certainly exceed maximum Holocene values — putting the current age of human fossil fuel based warming in a context similar to the Eemian of 150,000 years ago. A context that is all the more dangerous and troubling due to a massive greenhouse gas overburden not seen in at least 3 million years and a very rapid ramping of overall global temperatures. A pace of warming and greenhouse gas accumulation possibly never seen in all the Earth’s deep history.

Of particular interest to the 2015 climate situation, however, is the fact that though 2010 was also an El Nino year and though 2015 has already hit significant positive temperature departures during its first five months, 2010 had already seen most of the El Nino heat build it was likely to experience by May. The Equatorial Pacific, during May of 2010 was starting a multi-month cool-down into La Nina. By contrast, 2015 is still ramping up to an El Nino event that, in some measures, is already stronger than the El Nino experienced during 2010. As a result, we are likely to see greater high temperature departures due to a ramping heat bleed coming off the Pacific as the months of 2015 continue to progress.

To this point NOAA notes:

The first five months of 2015 were the warmest such period on record across the world’s land and ocean surfaces, at 0.85°C (1.53°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.09°C (0.16°F). Consequently, 2010 was the last year with El Niño conditions; however El Niño was ending at this point in 2010, while it appears to be maturing at the same point in 2015.

Another issue is that NOAA also recently adjusted its Ocean Nino Index (ONI) downward for late 2014 and early 2015. ONI measures the intensity of El Nino by taking account of sea surface temperatures in the Central Pacific. What this means is that the slow start to the current El Nino was even slower and weaker than initially indicated. As a result, according to NOAA, El Nino’s variability-based influence of the record global temperatures experienced during 2014 and early 2015 was consequently less and the human greenhouse gas forcing’s impact was consequently more.

To this point it is important to emphasize that 2014 was not technically an El Nino year, yet new record high temperatures were experienced during that time. This is notable in that it implies the human heat forcing through greenhouse gas emissions is playing an ever greater role — crowding out the old signals and fluxes inherent to base natural global temperature variability.

(Bill taking on the features of an organized cyclone over a water-logged Central US in yesterday’s MODIS shot. As of Thursday, some sections of Oklahoma has received a staggering 3 feet of rainfall in just six weeks. Image source: LANCE MODIS.)

The added heat appears to have also complicated normal El Nino variability by more greatly enhancing rainfall over affected regions than is typical. The Central US, in particular, has felt the brunt of this impact. During May, massive rainfall events brought flooding to Texas and Oklahoma. Sections of Oklahoma, as of yesterday, had experienced an unprecedented 3 feet of rain in just six weeks. A typical summer El Nino would somewhat enhance rainfall in this region. But not to the degree that we are seeing now. So the global warming-based amplification of the hydrological cycle is also likely in play. In this case, we see global warming and El Nino acting in concert to increase the likelihood of very extreme weather.

Though NOAA reports its data in a responsible, matter of fact, manner, it is important to consider the unprecedented nature of that information. What we are seeing is record warm years that occur increasingly outside the influence of El Nino, the ability of moderate El Nino heat flux to generate significant record global high temperature departures, and a tendency of strong El Nino periods to push global heating toward terrific ranges. These are all indications of an Earth System that is ranging ever more out of a context that the human beings and the creatures of this world are adapted to live in. Indications that we are rapidly moving toward a dangerous and extinction event producing Hothouse Climate. In this very rapid initial warming the likelihood of dangerous weather — heatwaves, fires, heavy rainfall events, intense storms — is thus increased. In addition, the push toward dangerous geophysical changes such as more rapid glacial melt and associated sea level rise becomes that much more intense and imminent.

The NOAA report is a signal of a condition of increasing climate crisis that should be reported widely and with all due urgency. By contrast, the tendency of global media (especially the individually-owned megamedia monopolies such as NewsCorp) to downplay, to sweep such reports under the rug, to attack such reports outright, or to only portray them in the most narrow of contexts is therefore vastly and unforgivably irresponsible (shout out to noted exceptions like The Guardian or underground and peripheral sources like RealClimate, WeatherUnderground, The Independent, The Arctic Sea Ice Blog, Dot.Earth and ThinkProgress).

The global scientific community and major religious leaders like the Pope (see the Pope’s loud and clear urging for global climate action here) are well aware of the situation and the calls for action from these responsible, moral leaders are growing louder and more urgent. The failure of media to appropriately relay that call and to generate action on the part of the public can only be seen, at this point, as an aspect of a dangerous allegiance to destructive and amoral businesses (fossil fuel industry), to individual interests who have a financial stake in a larger failure to respond to this crisis, and to political ideologies that are so filled with hubris as to be blind to an obvious and ramping existential crisis. Media, in this case, has thus become complicit in a failure to appropriately act, enhancing the intensity of the crisis, reducing the effectiveness of the response, and worsening the harm and increasing loss of life and livelihood to follow. A continuation of this failure would constitute nothing less than complicity in climate change denial and related harms. History, should history remain in tact following a failure to fully respond, will judge such a failure in the harshest possible terms.

Sea ice researchers like to talk a lot about what they call ‘Century Drops.’ Days when Arctic sea ice area or extent values fall more than 100,000 square kilometers. In the past, daily Century Drops were relatively rare — with steepest rates of loss occurring during late June through early August and featuring, perhaps, a handful of days in which 24 hour losses exceeded 100,000 square kilometers. But the record melt years of 2007 and 2012 showed a proliferation of daily drops that exceeded the 100,000 square kilometers daily threshold.

Well, a couple of days ago a three Century Drop showed up in the Cyrosphere Today measure. And it may just be something we’ve never seen before (UPDATE: actually the last time was 2008, see Neven’s comment below). At the least, it’s an event that’s pretty amazingly rare — or it should be, without the heat added to the Arctic by human fossil fuel emissions.

On Tuesday evening, the Cryosphere Today site showed Arctic sea ice at about 8,986,000 square kilometers. The next day the measure stood at about 8,646,000 square kilometers. That’s an extraordinary loss of 340,000 square kilometers in just one day.

340,000 square kilometers gone in a single 24 hour period. That’s an area of sea ice the size of the state of New Mexico gone in a single day. In the above graph, you can see the drop as the vertical turn in the yellow line denoting 2015.

The massive single day drop temporarily brought sea ice area in the Cryosphere Today sea ice area chart into the range of second lowest on record for the date. Area losses of around 70,000 square kilometers for Wednesday resulted in a retreat to around 4th lowest on record. But any period in which drops of this size become frequent would easily transport the measure into new record low territory.

(LANCE MODIS showing the tell-tale blue of melt ponds all over the Arctic Ocean and most concentrated in edge zone regions. Proliferation of melt ponds during early season, especially when combined with the impact of human caused global warming, can increase risk for new record lows by end season.)

The cause of such a large single day drop is likely due to a combination of factors. Lately, storms have been more prevalent in the Arctic Ocean proper and such storms have a tendency to spread the ice out more, opening gaps in the ice called polynyas which tends to push the sea ice area measure lower. In addition, there is melt pressure now in Baffin Bay, Hudson Bay, the Kara Sea, the Laptev Sea, the Beaufort Sea, the Chukchi Sea, The East Siberian Sea, the Canadian Archipelago waters, and in the Barents border region. This basically composes the entire border zone of the Arctic sea ice.

Finally, the NASA MODIS satellite composite for recent days has shown a marked shift toward a light blue coloration for the entire Arctic Ocean zone and especially for the border zones. Such a shift is indicative of a proliferation of melt ponds. Major snow cover losses over sea ice during the past two weeks have removed insulation to the sea ice pack and probably aided in the formation of these melt ponds. Melt ponds are a strong indicator for sea ice health throughout the melt season — so a proliferation of melt ponds at this time may be a sign of sea ice melt vulnerability (see more over at Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice blog where they do a bang-up job tracking seasonal melt ponds and their potential impacts).

Though a three Century drop occurred, melt overall still has some catching up to do to make 2012 levels. So though this massive daily drop occurred, we are not yet in the red zone for sea ice area. Sea ice extent measures, on the other hand, remain in the range of second to third lowest on record and are still very close to all time record low levels. So this particular melt season is certainly one to still keep watching.

The biological density of the blooms is so great that they can paint the waters affected a shade of brown or red. A bloody color indicative of clouds of dangerous microbes just beneath the surface. And today, a massive Red Tide — perhaps the largest ever recorded — now stretches from California to Alaska along a vast stretch of the North American West Coast already reeling under the ongoing and dangerous impact of a massive ocean heating event that researchers have called ‘The Blob.’

(A Red Tide can paint the ocean in bloody shades as seen in the image above. It’s also bad news for many marine species — first due to production of deadly biotoxins and second due to its ability to rob ocean waters of oxygen as the bloom dies off and decays. Image source: Wind’s Sustainability Blog.)

A Red Tide has numerous impacts to both marine life and human industry. Microbes within the tide produce biotoxins that are deadly to marine species. Domoic acid, PSP and DSP are all toxins that have been identified during the current Red Tide event. The toxins primarily affect fish and marine mammals — risking mass fish and dolphin, sea lion, seal, otter, and whale deaths during widespread blooms. The toxins concentrate as they move up the food chain, making them most dangerous to top predators. Primary effects of the most lethal toxins are convulsions and paralysis. Other toxins cause nausea, cramps and diarrhea.

“The fact that we’re seeing multiple toxins at the same time, we’re seeing high levels of domoic acid, and we’re seeing a coastwide bloom — those are indications that this is unprecedented.”

Global Warming, Hot Blob — Prime Suspects

Scientists currently suspect extreme Northeastern Pacific Ocean heat led to the sudden appearance of Red Tide this week — a combination of warm and nutrient rich waters are well known to be the key ingredients for Red Tide formation. Ingredients that are increasingly prevalent due to human fossil fuel burning. Ingredients that are increasingly evident in the Northeastern Pacific. In short the burning of fossil fuels both warms the atmosphere and ocean even as it seeds the surface water with nitrogen. The warm water is a preferred environment for the microbes that form the Red Tide and the nitrogen — both as a constant rain from the sky due to fossil fuel emission and as effluent from streams due to farm runoff — essentially fertilizes the bloom.

Warming the world ocean through human carbon emissions is thus a very dangerous consequence. Now, more and more regions are featuring hot zones that are increasingly deadly to sea life. This region of the Northeast Pacific in particular has seen a number of instances of mass ocean creature death due to impacts associated with warming waters. The recent Red Tide being the last of a long chain including a mass starfish die-off, fish kills, bird kills, and marine mammal deaths and disruption — including a winter and spring emergence of crowds of starving sea lion pups along California beaches.

Next Step — Anoxia, Possible Hydrogen Sulfide Issue

This particular Red Tide is still in its early stages. It could last for weeks. But as it reaches its last days, the mass production of microbial life will rob the ocean surface of the nutrients necessary to sustain it. As this happens, the microbes will experience a sudden die-off. The mass of dead microbes will then sink and decay. This decay will further rob already de-oxygenated waters, particularly off Washington and Seattle, of still more oxygen. So the final act of this particular Red Tide will be to make a bad ocean water oxygen situation in many of the affected regions even worse (in the worst case potentially setting some zones up for an ugly deep water hydrogen sulfide production).

At 11:45 AM EST today Tropical Storm Bill slugged its way over the Texas Coastline near Matagorda Island. The storm, packing sustained winds of 60 miles per hour and a minimum central pressure near 997 mb was relatively mild as Tropical Cyclones go. But Bill is heavily entrenched in a long train of tropical moisture straddling the Gulf of Mexico and flooding up from an intensifying Pacific El Nino. It therefore represents an extreme flood risk for a massive region stretching from Texas through a good chunk of the Central US.

(Bill makes landfall along Texas’s Central Gulf Coast dragging a huge train of thunderstorms along with it. Recent extreme floods have saturated the lands of Texas, Oklahoma and the Central US creating a condition that NASA researchers now call a Brown Ocean. The water saturation of the land mass due to extreme rainfall events and increased atmospheric moisture loading associated with climate change is a condition that some scientists believe may increase the likelihood of tropical storms, like Bill, intensifying over land. Image source: NOAA.)

As Bill moves northward, it is expected to pull this massive band of moisture behind it. The result is that areas of Texas already saturated with moisture from last month’s heavy rains could see 6-10 more inches in a broad band and greater than 12 inches locally near the San Antonio and Dallas region. Bill is projected to then sweep northward through Oklahoma and on through a wide crescent of the Central US — dumping 2-6 inches of rain with locally as much as 8 inches directly along its path.

Such heavy rainfall and thunderstorms associated with Bill have the potential to set off a repeat of the kind of epic deluges this same region witnessed over Memorial Day. And due to the fact that grounds are already saturated and many streams remain near flood stage, this particular event has a high risk of producing even more extreme flooding.

(Bill shows extreme rainfall potential over areas still recovering from record flooding late last month. Image source: National Hurricane Center.)

Bill and Global Warming’s Brown Ocean

This extreme rainfall potential arises from a combination of factors. The first is the added moisture loading over the region due to El Nino combined with the record high global temperatures of human caused climate change — which increases the atmosphere’s ability to carry water vapor and accelerates the hydrological cycle. The second is a related potential feature likely linked to this extra moisture — a circumstance that scientists have called ‘the Brown Ocean.’

A Brown Ocean environment consists of three observable conditions. First, the lower level of the atmosphere mimics a tropical atmosphere with minimal variation in temperature. Second, soils in the vicinity of the storms need to contain ample moisture. Finally, evaporation of the soil moisture releases latent heat, which the team found must measure at least 70 watts averaged per square meter. For comparison, the latent heat flux from the ocean averages about 200 watts per square meter.

(Since 1979 16 Tropical Cyclones have maintained TC characteristics while intensifying or keeping a steady strength over land. Bill has a potential to become one of these freakish systems. Image source: NASA.)

“All the things a hurricane likes over the ocean is what we have over land right now,” said Marshall Shepherd, director of atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia and one of the leads of a NASA-funded Brown Ocean study.

It’s worth noting that Brown Oceans have not been officially linked to human caused climate change. But the factors that feed Brown Oceans — high heat and humidity that is the upshot of very extreme rainfall events — are multiplied in a warming world. And it’s this kind of moist hot zone that Bill is now barreling toward.

News out from NASA today — the first five months of 2015 are the hottest ever recorded in the global climate record. Global temperatures hotter than any comparable period by a very significant margin.

According to NASA’s GISS division, May of 2015 came in at 0.71 C hotter than the 20th Century average. That ties 2012 for the second hottest May since record keeping began in 1880. But, more importantly, when averaged — January (+0.75 C), February (+0.82 C), March (+0.84 C), April (+0.71 C) and now May — the first five months of 2015 come in at 0.766 C above 20th Century baselines. That’s about 0.96 C above 1880s values — a level fast approaching the 1 C threshold and the far more dangerous climate impacts that come after.

If 2015 were to remain at such hot levels, the final measure would appear as the star on the above chart. And with the first half of June already seeing +0.7 to +0.85 C warmer than 20th Century conditions amidst a growing El Nino in the Equatorial Pacific, it appears highly possible, even likely, that current atmospheric warming levels could be maintained or even exceeded through end of year.

For reference, +0.76 C is fully 0.15 C hotter than the Super El Nino year of 1998 — the cherry of all cherries for global warming deniers. A fossil fueled group that has used this particular atmospheric and ocean cherry as a basis for arguing that greenhouse gas forced global warming ‘paused’ after the 1998 El Nino. A claim that has also been used as a platform to advance a raft of other nonsense including the false notion that climate sensitivity is far less than consensus ranges of 3 C ECS and 6 C ESS (basically meaning that each doubling of atmospheric CO2 brings 3 C warming short term and 6 C warming over many centuries). A claim that was recently also destroyed in a fantastic paper released earlier this month by NOAA.

From the press release to the June 4 NOAA paper:

A new study published online today in the journal Science finds that the rate of global warming during the last 15 years has been as fast as or faster than that seen during the latter half of the 20th Century. The study refutes the notion that there has been a slowdown or “hiatus” in the rate of global warming in recent years.

There were numerous related and predictable meltdowns from climate change denial media and political personalities not worth specific notice at this time (AW and BT, I have something for you later this year, but not now.). But the NOAA data is pretty amazingly clear as seen in the chart below which notably does not include the new 2015 records:

(NOAA study finds pace of global warming has kept steady or even accelerated over the past 35 years.)

Ocean Heat Accumulation Accelerating

Of course, any rational observer paying attention to heat accumulation in the top 2000 meters of the world ocean or the ever more rapidly destabilizing glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica already knew that talk of hiatus was probably most likely at best a sick joke. The ocean ends up taking in a far greater portion of the greenhouse gas heat forcing than the atmosphere ever could. As a result, more than 93.4 percent of the heat accumulated by human fossil fuel emissions ends up in the ocean. That’s an enormous amount of heat destined to come back and impact both glaciers and atmosphere even if rates of warming in either of those smaller systems had paused (which NOAA indicates they haven’t).

(Global Ocean heat content since 1958 as provided by NOAA NODC showing an extraordinary heat accumulation and a disturbing upward curve at the end of the graph.)

Instead, we see a clearly accelerating rate of ocean warming. A slope that makes one of those sick upward curves we’ve become so used to when dealing with a human-spurred greenhouse gas accumulation at least 6 times faster than at any time in all of Earth’s deep history.

It thus now appears that the atmosphere is in the process of catching up to the ocean. And the strong heat bleed off a ramping El Nino in the Pacific now combines with human greenhouse gasses in the range of 400 ppm CO2 and 480 ppm CO2e to enable this ominous heat increase.

The Pope is on a mission. The most moral and ethical mission of this century and perhaps of all time. A mission to stop a fossil fueled capitalist monstrosity from a “tyrranical” destruction of much of the world’s life-sustaining resources for the temporary gain of a handful of wealthy billionaires. A mission to stop this unjust system from victimizing the poor and from swelling their ranks with climate change sacrifice zone refugees. A mission to stop this unbridled, amoral, money-worshipping construct from killing our peoples, our civilizations, our planet.

(In the lead-up to the 2015 Climate Summit in Paris, the Pope is urging the world to take climate action. His new encyclical will focus on the moral and spiritual imperative to preserve and nurture the Earth’s life support systems and to help the poor. The Pope views climate action as not only a moral and social justice issue, but also as a divine imperative. He sees the role of fossil fuel based political, market and resource domination as deeply unjust — a tyrannical treatment of nature and the poor that puts humankind under existential threat.)

The Pope is on a mission. A divinely inspired mission to root out a deep injustice that has been with all people, all nations, since the beginning, but that has greatly worsened due to the exploitation of fossil fuels and a proliferation of institutions possessing no moral values and only valuing a greed-based profit motive. A mission we must succeed in if we are to survive and have much hope of thriving in the coming years, decades, and centuries. A mission which you are called to join if you are thinking, feeling, and believe in life outside of the money-worship and resultant carbon conflagration that has now put every human, every creature into ever-amplifying peril.

It is a mission the Pope will more deeply explore in his coming encyclical on Thursday, June 18. A call for action that bears the clear and undeniable message: “If we destroy God’s Creation, it will destroy us.”

And it is very clear from the early releases of his upcoming proclamation that the Pope is taking on the powerful and wealthy political supporters of fossil fuel burning around the world. Taking on the 169 billionaires who now hold in their hands more than half of all the world’s wealth. A wealth whose concentration is enabled by unfair market systems and the domination of enforced consumption of finite and terribly destructive fossil fuels. An unjust base of terrible economic might enforced by conservative (neo-liberal) policies that delay and deny renewable energy adoption, the expansion of more efficient energy use, and that force destructive fossil fuel use upon ever growing numbers of people.

To these points, the Pope has laid down a number of clear messages. The Pope warns us of expanding poverty and a swelling of the number of refugees due to economic exploitation and climate change:

[A] threat to peace arises from the greedy exploitation of environmental resources. Monopolizing of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness.

The Pope calls us to understand the essential imperative to protect the Earth and to nurture both it and its creatures. To not abuse, exploit, or destroy it. In other words, we are Earth’s protectors and nurturers, not her tyrants and good work is directly linked to the care of the Earth:

Genesis tells us that God created man and woman entrusting them with the task of filling the earth and subduing it, which does not mean exploiting it, but nurturing and protecting it, caring for it through their work.

The Pope tells us that the global hothouse crisis is existential for human beings and one that is due to a failure of human ethics:

We are experiencing a moment of crisis; we see it in the environment, but we mostly see it in man. The human being is at stake: here is the urgency of human ecology! And the danger is serious because the cause of the problem is not superficial, but profound, it’s not just a matter of economics, but of ethics.

The Pope equates the current incarnation of neo-liberal (read US conservative) market capitalism and hyper-individualism to the ancient golden calf idol of the Bible saying:

We have created new idols. The worship of the ancient golden calf has returned in a new and ruthless guise in the idolatry of money. Trickle-down economics is a failed theory. Excessive consumerism is killing our culture, values and ethics. The conservative ideal of individualism is undermining the common good.

The Pope sees greed-based economic systems as tyrannical, unjust and destructive, forcing unhealthy consumption, and calls for a radical new financial system to avoid human inequality and environmental devastation:

It is no longer man who commands but money. Cash commands. Greed is the motivation. An economic system centered on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rthymn of consumption that is inherent to it. [A] radical new financial system [is required] to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation.

The Pope calls us tostop seeking to dominate and exploit Creation, but to instead cooperate with, care for and respect it. That it is a task set out by God to live in the heartbeat of Creation. To nurture Creation. To care for Creation. This is the calling in each of our hearts:

This task entrusted to us by God the Creator requires us to grasp the rhythm and logic of Creation. But we are often driven by pride of domination, of possessions, manipulation, of exploitation; we do not care for Creation, we do not respect it. Nurturing and caring for Creation is a command God gives not only at the beginning of history, but to each of us. It is a part of his plan; it means causing the world to grow responsibly, transforming it so that it may be a garden, a habitable place for everyone.

The Pope notes that caring for the poor and caring for creation are linked and that there is no way out of the crisis without a radical cessation of every kind of exploitation and harm to innocents:

As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution can be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems as environmental damage does trickle down most on the poor.

This is a divine mission. One the Pope has called upon you to support. To give aid and lend your effort to the divine imperative to help the poor and to preserve the life-sustaining bounty of Earth. Will you join him? Or will you join the others? Those the scriptures have aptly labeled — Destroyers of the Earth?

It all started with a powerful Springtime Kelvin Wave. A trans-ocean telegraphing of heat that signaled the ramp-up toward El Nino during 2014. Heat spread out over the ocean surface and just beneath, but a failure of the atmosphere to respond to this forcing meant only the emergence of a weak El Nino by early 2015. At that time, it looked as if the El Nino could fade, adding to a long list of other weak-to-moderate events since the record-shattering years of 1997-1998.

But extraordinary westerly winds developed over the Western Pacific during late Winter and re-emerged through Spring. As a result, warm waters again gathered in an eastward surge across the Pacific — a Kelvin Wave more powerful than even the intense 2014 event.

(The Spring Kelvin Wave remains very hot into early June, showing some reinvigoration due to atmospheric feedbacks. Image source: NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.)

By April and May it had flooded into a warm pool off the West Coast of South America, pushing surface waters into the peak values of 3-4 Celsius above average temperatures, while 5-6 C + above average temperatures lurked just below the surface.

By June, the Kelvin Wave had re-intensified even as it rebounded a bit off South America. Meanwhile, ocean surface heating continued to ramp up. By June 8, temperatures in the Central Pacific Nino 3.4 zone had hit a +1.2 C anomaly — already entering moderate El Nino range. Meanwhile, NOAA’s multivariate ENSO index showed that by June 4 the 2014-2015 El Nino was now stronger than any event since 1997-1998 with overall departures now exceeding the +1.5 C range. Such a departure marks a foray into strong El Nino territory:

This time, the atmosphere and ocean are much more in sync, so we can put more trust in the current model outlooks—especially now that we’re past the “spring predictability barrier” that makes early-year forecasts of El Niño so tough. In today’s update, NOAA is calling for a greater than 90% chance that El Niño will continue through the northern fall of 2015, and around an 85% chance it will last through the winter of 2015-16.

Should El Nino start to peter out now, we’d be looking at something perhaps a bit stronger than the 2009-2010 event. But given the above trends, El Nino is still strengthening. A fact confirmed by forecast model runs that continue to show potential for a strong to potentially record-shattering event come Fall of 2015.

(Australian Bureau of Meteorology shows model runs predicting a strong to record shattering El Nino by October of 2015. Image source: BOM.)

All long range models now show Nino 3.4 sea surface temperatures predicted to hit between 1.5 and 3.0 C above base-line levels by October. Model averages now show a 2.4 C departure for all the major runs. Such an event would be extraordinary — equaling or exceeding the 1997-1998 El Nino (which topped off at 2.2 C above average in the three month measure).

All this information generates a clear picture of a still intensifying El Niño. One that has an increasing potential to develop into a real beast come Fall. As a result, we can expect continued global record hot temperatures to continue, as El Nino combines with an egregious human fossil fuel burning to shove global temperatures into ever-more-dangerous ranges. In addition, storm track intensification come Fall could be quite extreme when one considers both the possible strength of El Nino and the powerful atmospheric moisture loading due to a ramp up of temperatures into the range of +0.95 C above 1880s averages.

They call it The Blob. No, it’s not some campy 1950s horror flick featuring a gelatinous monstrosity from space aimed at devouring all life in its path. This Blob is a pool of much hotter than normal water that has become increasingly entrenched in the North-East Pacific. A surface zone of record ocean warmth that has persisted and intensified in the same region for the better part of two years.

Though it’s not the sci-fi movie Blob, this particular climate change monstrosity could well be described as stranger than fiction. It’s an ocean feature of the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge which has warded storms off the North American West Coast over the past couple of years. A likely upshot of an ongoing Arctic heating — setting off weather conditions that sparked both this year’s massive Northwest Territory Wildfires and the worst drought the California region has seen in at least 1,000 years. And like the sci-fi movie space monster of yore, the Northeast Pacific heat Blob has a nasty penchant for devouring ocean life of all kinds.

(Under an ongoing El Nino, the Equatorial Pacific is getting pretty hot with temperature spikes ranging from +2.5 C above normal temperatures at mid-ocean to +4 C above average off the West Coast of South America. But these rather warm temperature anomalies are nothing compared to The Blob [at center frame above] which now features temperatures in the range of +5 C above average. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

The news about The Blob today comes in two forms — bad and worse. The bad news is that it’s still there. Still influencing our weather, still threatening sea life and fisheries. And the worse news is that it appears to be heating up. Today’s readings put much of The Blob in the 3.5 to 5.5 C above average temperature range, which is 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius warmer than we’ve seen in this zone since its first heat intensification during the spring of 2014.

Wonky Weather

Back in April, a study published in Geophysical Research Letters and reported in LiveScience found that temperatures over a broad region of Northeast Pacific surface waters had averaged between 1-4 C (2 to 7 F) above normal temperatures. It covered an area roughly 1,000 miles in diameter and extended about 300 feet below surface waters.

“In the fall of 2013 and early 2014 we started to notice a big, almost circular mass of water that just didn’t cool off as much as it usually did, so by spring of 2014 it was warmer than we had ever seen it for that time of year.”

(Warm Blob T anomalies for April of 2014 as provided by NOAA and AGU. Note that today’s anomalies are well in excess of April 2014 readings.)

The Blob’s large size combined with its failure to cool in spring to set off some rather strange weather impacts, according to the report’s findings. Winds blowing over high heat content ocean waters ran inland over the US and Canadian West Coasts. This invasion pushed warm air over lands and mountains. Snowpacks melted, lands warmed and dried out. Massive wildfires erupted thoughout both the US and Canada.

The hot air mass over the warm water blob has acted as a brutish atmospheric feature since this time. Like a towering wall of air it has consistently deflected oncoming storms that typically charge across the Pacific During Winter and Spring — reinforcing a weird extreme weather regime.

Threat to Sea Life

The AGU report also cited recent severe impacts to sea life as found in a March 17 study by NOAA. Highlights of the NOAA study showed substantial ocean life impacts including weaker copopod production in the warming waters, likely less vital salmon fisheries, bird deaths, marine mammal deaths and starving sea lions due to scarcity of food sources. In addition, the warm temperatures have been linked to a starfish wasting sickness that has killed off millions of sea stars up and down the North American West Coast.

What the NOAA report did not include was growing evidence that warming waters off the US West Coast have (when combined with eutriphication due to atmospheric nitrogen seeding through fossil fuel burning and farm nutrient runoff), since the early 2000s, resulted in increasingly dangerous low ocean oxygen levels (see Starving Sea Lion Pups and Liquified Starfish). It’s a one-two warming and oxygen loss that is pretty amazingly dangerous to ocean life.

The NOAA study further noted that the high sea surface temperatures spurring these impacts were at or near unprecedented levels, a confirmation of the AGU report findings:

“We are in some ways entering a situation we haven’t seen before,” said Cisco Werner, Director of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. “That makes it all the more important to look at how these conditions affect the entire ecosystem because different components and different species may be affected differently.”

PDO and Climate Change Not Helping

The current unprecedented warm temperatures in The Blob are, in part, an upshot of a warmer sea surface state now in effect called positive Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). During these times, Pacific Ocean waters tend to be warmer — especially in the region where the Blob has recently emerged. During December of 2014, PDO hit new all-time record high values — an extreme likely pushed over the top by added atmospheric and ocean heating through human greenhouse gas emissions.

During positive PDO periods, El Nino events both tend to be more prevalent and show higher intensity. And during spring and summer El Ninos, we tend to see increased warming of the Pacific region now dominated by The Blob.

All these PDO based fluxes are natural variability related. But the real kicker, the icing on the cake of this extreme event is almost certainly climate change. Specifically for the hot Blob zone, general greenhouse gas warming of the adjacent Arctic called Polar Amplification has tended to generate a weakness in the Jet Stream directly over the region. This weakness has tended to aid in Ridiculously Resilient Ridge development and the month on month, year on year heatwaves that have pushed ocean temperatures in this zone into ever more extreme hot values (see Dr. Francis’s “Weird Weather Plot ThickensAs Arctic Swiftly Warms“). And though overall global warming now in the range of +0.95 C above 1880s values has also likely contributed in a broader sense, the direct impact to the Arctic has likely aided in the development of a high anomaly heat spike for this particular ocean zone.

So, in total, we have a number of factors pushing record ocean warmth in this region, setting the stage for sea creature death and wrecked North American weather alike. But the primary contributor to these unsettling events is almost certainly climate change. For its influences have made possible the new levels of extreme conditions which we are now experiencing.

Keeping all this in mind, let’s talk a little bit about the ugly transition to phase 2 climate change. A transition it now appears we’re at the start of. The — you should have listened to Dr. James Hansen and read The Storms of My Grandchildren — phase of climate change. The awful, long, stormy period in which the great glaciers really start going down.

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In an effort to organize how human-caused climate change may proceed, it helps to break the likely progression of human-caused climate change down into three basic phases. For this simplification we have phase 1 — polar amplification, phase 2 glacial melt and storms, and phase 3 — runaway hothouse and stratified/Canfield Oceans. For this article, we’ll focus mostly on phase 1 and 2.

Phase 1 — Polar Amplification

During the first phase, human greenhouse gas emissions gradually add heat to the atmosphere. This causes general warming that is most intense at the polar regions, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Called Polar Amplification, this added heating at the poles occurs due to greenhouse gasses’ ability to increase the atmosphere’s heat trapping efficiency at night, when the sunlight angle is low, or during periods of dimmer light (cloudiness etc). In addition, snow and ice melt cause albedo loss at the poles and greenhouse gasses sequestered within frozen carbon stores may release during warming as ice thaws adding another kick to polar amplification (amplifying feedbacks). Due to lower volumes of continental ice, more low-albedo land mass, more vulnerable carbon stores, and closer proximity to human greenhouse gas emissions sources, the Northern Hemisphere polar zone is most vulnerable to increased rates of warming during phase 1 climate change.

Weather impacts during phase 1 include a slowing down of the jet stream due to loss of polar ice, a multiplication of slow moving weather systems, an increasing prevalence of drought and heavy rainfall events, and a slow ratcheting of the intensity of powerful storms. Phase 1 continues until ice sheets begin to become heavily involved and melt outflows greatly increase. At that point, we begin a transition to a more unstable period of human-caused climate change — phase 2.

Phase 2 — An Age of Storms

During phase 2, ever-increasing volumes of cold, fresh ice and water pulse out from the world’s glaciers. In essence, the great mountains of ice really get moving and there’s nothing left to stop them. The glacial heat content has reached a critical point and the glaciers start moving and crumbling on a massive scale. A seaward avalanche that has essentially become unstoppable due to basic inertia.

Due to highest levels of ice concentration, the regions seeing the greatest impact are areas adjacent to Greenland and Antarctica. Cold, fresh water and ice hitting these local ocean zones have numerous influences. The first is that the local fresh water acts as a lid on ocean-to-atmosphere heat transfer. As a result, atmospheric temperatures in the region near large glacial melts will tend to cool. Warm, saltier surface waters near the glacial outflows are pushed downward by the lighter, fresh water — heating the ocean bottom zone and continuing to melt the underbellies of sea facing glaciers. Ultimately, the meridional ocean circulations in the North Atlantic and in the Southern Ocean are cut off.

Deep water formation is driven toward the equator. This stops heat transport toward the poles in a number of regions resulting in equatorial heat amplification. Meanwhile, the impact of the fresh water ocean lid results in local atmospheric cooling near the glaciers — a counter-trend to a larger global warming.

Weather-wise, we see a reverse of the trends first apparent during phase 1. The cooling of surface zones near the great glaciers puts a damper of phase 1 polar amplification. Meanwhile, the southward progression of fresh surface waters shuts down the oceanic coveyors transporting heat into the polar zones. As a result we see heat building up through a kind of ocean heat transport train-wreck in low latitude regions near the equator. The combined equatorial heating and near glacier cooling increases temperature gradients and amplifies the storm track.

(Model runs showing temperature anomalies under A1B [near RCP 6.0] scenario warming with 0.6 meter global sea level rise from glacial outflows by 2065 and 1.44 meter global sea level rise by 2080 vs only thermal expansion based sea level rise [right frame images]. Note that A1B implies about 550 ppm CO2 — a bad scenario but no-where near the worst case. Also note that these models do not include carbon store response feedbacks. Finally, the models were adjusted by adding fresh water outflows from glaciers, so this is not a prediction of rate of sea level rise, only a projection of atmospheric impacts under a given melt and ghg scenario. Image source: Greenland Melt Exponential?)

In the Northern Hemisphere, the North Atlantic sees the greatest counter-trend cooling influence in atmospheric regions due to glacial melt. Meanwhile, Arctic regions continue to see (somewhat slowed) warming conditions. The result is a shift of the center of cold air to an off-set zone more toward Greenland and a screaming storm track running oblong over the polar zone and centering over a trough in the North Atlantic. Amazing temperature differentials between the continents, the Polar zone, Greenland, the North Atlantic, the equatorial Atlantic and Africa result in the potential for continent-sized storms packing the strength of hurricanes according to a recent study by Hansen.

The storms would spin up as the unstable cold air over Greenland ravels and unravels in great frontal wings of cold air encountering the hot air roiling at the equator and building in sections of the Arctic and over the continents. Tropical storms forming adjacent to cold core storms would increase the potential for hybrid storm events. And extreme temperature gradients would provide high octane atmospheric fuel for baroclinic systems. Finally, the great melt pulses themselves would supply periods of high global thermal variance. The pre melt pulse times would see rapid warming, while the post melt pulse times would see cooling. This up-down would periodically load and then wring the global atmosphere of moisture, resulting in high risk for extreme deluge events.

Heating the Deep Ocean Sets Stage for Phase 3

Meanwhile, heat at the ocean surface is driven toward the deep ocean by the fresh water melt pulses issuing from the glaciers. So the melt outflows and storms of phase 2 climate change act as an amazing mechanism for atmosphere-to-ocean heat transfer. Which is really bad news for the health of the world ocean system.

This phase 2 climate change age of storms lasts so long as large glacial outflows still issue from Greenland (in the North) and Antarctica (in the South). Since even under the most rapid pace of human-caused warming it would take hundreds of years for the great ice sheets to go down, what we are looking at is a period of possibly centuries. Avoiding phase 2 climate change, on the other hand, involves avoiding rapid destablization of Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets. An issue we may have already pushed too hard to prevent at least some of these storm, ocean, and weather destabilization impacts.

As for phase 3 climate change — that’s a transition to a runaway hothouse and a stratified/Canfield Ocean state. And we really don’t want to see that either. But before we get there, it’s a transition to an age of glacial melt and tremendously potent storms.

A high amplitude ridge in the Jet Stream is forecast to develop atop the Yamal region of Russia, expand northward over the Kara and Laptev seas, inject a plume of anomalously warm air over the polar region, and then proceed on along the Arctic Ocean shores of Siberia. Beneath this ridge, temperatures over the Arctic Ocean will spike to +1 to +4 C above average while temperatures over land will hit extreme +20 C and higher anomalies.

(Arctic heatwave invades Siberia in the GFS forecast for later this week as depicted by Climate Reanalyzer.)

Arctic Ocean zones are forecast to see temperatures climb above freezing for much of the 80 degree North Latitude zone. Over Siberia, land-based temperatures are predicted to range from the 40s and 50s along the Arctic Ocean boundary and climb to the 60s to 80s in regions just inland.

As temperatures tend to flatten out over Arctic Ocean waters and as permafrost zones in Siberia are used to far cooler readings during Northern Hemisphere Summer, the predicted heatwave is likely to have some rather strong impacts should it emerge. Most notably, snow cover over remaining land and sea ice is expected to see a rather extreme reduction over the next seven days. In other words, GFS forecast models show Northern Hemisphere snow cover basically getting crushed:

Sparse remaining snow cover in Northeast Siberia along the East Siberian Arctic Shelf coastal zone is expected to be pretty much wiped out. One foot average snow cover along the shores of the Laptev and Kara seas is also expected to melt. And a broad section of remaining snow upon the sea ice is predicted to retreat away from the North Polar region — receding back toward the final haven near Greenland.

Snow is important for spring and summer-time Arctic temperature moderation due to the fact that it provides insulation to sea ice and permafrost as well as serving as a reflective, high-albedo surface that bounces back some of the incoming heat from the 24-hour seasonal Arctic sun. Snow melt, on the other hand, serves to form albedo-reducing melt ponds over the Arctic Ocean sea ice during summer. A critical factor in late season melt forecasting in which more June melt ponds tend to mean lower sea ice totals by end season. In addition, snow melt fills permafrost zone rivers with above-freezing waters that then flow into the Arctic Ocean — providing yet another heat forcing to the sea ice.

Conditions in Context

This weekly trend and forecast is consistent with an ongoing tendency during 2015 for strong ridge formation and warm air slot development over both Alaska and the Yamal region of Russia. The high amplitude ridges also likely have teleconnections with larger weather patterns such as El Nino in the Pacific, the warm water pool (hot blob) in the Northeast Pacific, and record low sea ice extents continuing for most of Northern Hemisphere Spring. Observations that are also consistent with the predictions made by Dr. Jennifer Francis that are a direct upshot of polar amplification set off by human-caused warming of the global climate system.

(GFS model forecast as depicted by Earth Nullschool showing ridge Northwest Territory, trough Greenland and North Atlantic, ridge Kara and Laptev region of Siberia. A dynamic that may be the result of teleconnections set off by factors related to human-caused climate change. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)

It’s worth noting that many of these factors are self reinforcing. For example, more sea ice melt results in higher amplitude wave formation in the Jet Stream. Higher amplitude wave formation in the Jet Stream transports more warmth to the Arctic environment, resulting in more sea ice and snow melt which in turn weakens the Jet Stream further. A longer-term amplifying feedback of Arctic carbon release may also be in play (hinted at by an overburden of both CO2 and methane in the local Arctic atmosphere), which would also contribute to the conditions we now observe.

A final feedback, this one somewhat negative, occurs as a result of Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) melt. Large cold, freshwater outflows from GIS into the North Atlantic result in localized cooling in that region. This feedback (also related to AMO weakening) enhances trough formation throughout the North Atlantic region adjacent to Greenland and the Canadian Archipelago. A final potential teleconnection to the ridges we see forming over both Yamal and the Alaska/Northwest Territory zone.

The above May 25 temperature map by NOAA displays an extreme heat pattern that has remained in place now for weeks over India, with 40 degree Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) temperatures covering a greater portion of the country. Andhra Pradesh, at the center of this hot zone, has seen the most impact with more than 1700 souls lost there as of this morning.

As with most heatwaves, the elderly, the poor, and those who work outdoors have shown the highest losses. In this heatwave, field workers, who survive on daily wages, have been particularly hard-hit. The choice for them has been a brutal one of brave the blazing heat and risk life or stay home in the shade and risk livelihood.

Monsoon Delayed, Weak

A smattering of rain showers has started to infiltrate sections of India as of today, bringing isolated relief. But, overall, the larger Indian Monsoon continues to hold off, delayed at its gates in the Bay of Bengal.

Unfortunately, due to the delayed monsoon and extreme heat deeply entrenched throughout many regions of India, we can expect a high risk for loss of life to continue for at least the next few days as a weakened and delayed monsoon fights to gain ground. This is an instance of yet another early, easy outlier of the very extreme climate change related weather that will follow, with locked-in conditions worsening so long as we continue burning fossil fuels.

Over the past few months, reporting stations around the Arctic have shown a ramping rate of atmospheric methane accumulation. The curves in the graphs are steepening, hinting at a growing release of methane from a warming Arctic environment.

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(Alert, Canada methane graph shows atmospheric methane increases in the range of 20 parts per billion in just one year. This rate of increase is 2-3 times the global average for the past five years. A skyrocketing rate of increase. Image source: NOAA ESRL.)

A Massive Thawing Carbon Store in the Far North

The science is pretty settled. There’s a massive store of ancient carbon now thawing in the Arctic.

In the land-based permafrost alone, this store is in the range of 1.3 billion tons — or nearly double the volume in the atmosphere right now. Arctic Ocean methane hydrates in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf add another 500 billion tons. A rather vulnerable store that does not include hundreds of billions of additional tons of carbon in the deeper methane hydrates around the Arctic in places like the Gakkel Ridge, in the Deep Waters off Svalbard, or in the Nares Strait. Massive carbon stores of high global warming potential gas locked in frozen ground or in ice structure upon or beneath the sea bed.

But now human beings — through fossil fuel emissions — are dumping heat trapping gasses into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. These gasses are most efficient at trapping heat in the colder, darker regions of the world. And, due to a combination of massive Northern Hemisphere burning, and release from the Arctic carbon stores themselves, the highest concentrations of greenhouse gasses can be found exactly where they are needed least — in the world’s far northern zones .

(The Arctic consistently shows an overburden of methane gas — both at the ground and upper levels of the atmosphere as seen in this METOP graphic from May 29. Such an overburden is but one of many proxy indicators of a ramping rate of release.)

This accumulation and overburden of heat trapping gasses is causing the Arctic to rapidly warm. A rate of warming (now at half a degree Celsius per decade for most regions) that is providing a heat forcing pushing the ancient carbon stores to release. A heat forcing now greater than at any time in the past 150,000 years (and likely more due to the fact that the Eemian Arctic was rather cool overall). A heat forcing rapidly ramping toward at least a range not seen since major glaciation began in the Northern Hemisphere 2-3 million years ago.

The problem for science, then, is two-fold. First, as oceans warm and permafrost thaws, how rapidly will the carbon stores release? And, second, how much of that carbon store will release as CO2, and how much will release as methane? From the point of view of global warming, both CO2 and Methane emissions feedback is a bad outcome of human-forced warming. But methane, which has a global warming potential of between 25 and 120 times CO2 over human-relevant timescales, has a real potential to make an already bad human heating of the Earth System much, much worse.

For this reason, monitoring methane gas accumulation in the Arctic is a key feature of global climate change risk analysis. If the Arctic shows a spiking rate of methane accumulation, then the carbon stores are more susceptible to rapid release of potent heat trapping gasses and we are facing a high urgency situation in need of rapid global response.

Over the past decade, the Arctic has shown numerous isolated or regional spikes to very high methane levels with an overall continued accumulation within the atmosphere. The Arctic also displayed a major overburden of both methane and CO2 — proxy indications of local carbon store feedbacks already ongoing on a minor-to-moderate scale. This combination of overburden and spikes provided a troubling context, especially when adding in observations of methane store release through thermokarst lakes and, later, blow-holes in locations like Yamal, Russia. But up until last year, we had not seen a third, and more troubling, indicator — the ramping rates of atmospheric methane accumulation that would be an early warning that the Arctic carbon store was indeed starting to blow its stack.

But now, that signal is starting to show up at almost every Arctic reporting station. A steepening curve in the Arctic atmospheric methane graphs. A signal we really, really don’t want to be bearing witness to:

(Major reporting stations from Svalbard to Barrow show a ramping atmospheric methane accumulation [Click on individual images to expand]. It’s a signal that is yet one more indicator of an amplifying methane and greenhouse gas feedback to human warming now going on in the Arctic. Images provided by NOAA ESRL.)

Now, it seems, at the very least, we are witnessing a spike in Arctic atmospheric methane accumulation. Let’s hope it’s just a spike and not the start of another ugly exponential curve associated with human-forced atmospheric warming. But if we are witnessing the early ramp of such a curve, we should be clear that we are now in the context of a worst-case climate change scenario.

Hot-Button Topic of Critical Importance

For years, conjecture over the possible rate of Arctic Methane release in a human-warmed Arctic has been the source of extreme scientific and media-based controversy. Major oil companies have used the issue as an excuse to continue fossil fuel burning (irresponsibly spreading the meme — ‘we’re screwed, so we may as well just keep burning anyway’). Major climate scientists and related media outlets have sought to tamp down concern over large-scale methane release by issuing articles with titles like ‘Apocalypse Not’ with many generally insisting that there is practically zero likelihood of a large-scale methane release or major amplifying feedback. Meanwhile, the observational studies have continued to indicate risk of at least moderate and possibly strong methane feedback in an age of rapid human heating of the Arctic environment (studies like this recent paper which observed microbes tripling the rate of methane gas release in thermokarst lakes as a response to Arctic temperature increase.) Finally, a group of very concerned observational scientists like Natalia Shakhova, Igor Simeletov and Peter Wadhams have warned that a large-scale methane release is likely imminent and begs a major response from the global community (sadly, many of these proposed responses have come in the form of geo-engineering — methods which are far less likely to succeed and far more likely to generate unforeseen and highly disruptive consequences than simple cessation of human fossil fuel emission and a transition to carbon-negative civilizations).

A ramping rate of atmospheric methane accumulation at reporting stations throughout the Arctic (most but not all stations).

A ramping rate of atmospheric methane accumulation from global proxy monitors like Mauna Loa and in the global atmospheric average.

Together, these observations represent a troubling trend that, should it continue, will be proceeding along or near a worst-case climate sensitivity track. As such, these new ramping rates of increase in Arctic atmospheric monitors are a very unfortunate indicator.